The Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is helping the Securities and Exchange Commission and such companies as Dow Chemical, General Electric, and Microsoft streamline financial reporting. The XML-style language, now at version 2.1, promises more accurate reports that can be produced faster and less expensively. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) now requires that reports it receives be formatted in XBRL. A base set of data types for time, money, dates, and other properties form the standards foundation and are used by various taxonomies representing types of reports, regions, and regulatory agencies. The taxonomies are each described by an XML Schema that has been approved by the XBRL International steering committee. The FFIECs Central Data Repository has required reports in XBRL since the third quarter of 2005. Since that time 95 percent of the systems reports have included the expected data elements, compared to only 66 percent previously. More importantly, all of the XBRL reports were shown to be accurate in a follow-up check. By the spring of 2006 24 companies had agreed to provide the SEC with XBRL-formatted data, but rather than mandating use of the standard, the SEC hopes that XBRL adoption is driven by the market. Business Objects has adapted its BusinessObjects XI business intelligence product, in collaboration with EDGAR Online and Ipedo, to create XBRL-XI. The General Ledger and other components of Oracles E-Business Suite will support XBRL, and SAPs ERP Financials, NetWeaver, and other products include XBRL.